In a deal that has taken even Silicon Valley by surprise, Salesforce is acquiring API vendor MuleSoft for $6.85 billion. Within days of their deal to acquire Mulesoft, Salesforce, announced the Salesforce Integration Cloud for connected customer experiences.

Highlights of the Salesforce Mulesoft Deal

The two entered into a definitive agreement of an estimated $ 6.5 billion, surpassing the $2.8 billion Salesforce paid for Demandware.

Soon after, Salesforce publicly clarified that they were the only bidders for Mulesoft and competition was not a factor driving the hefty price

Salesforce, Mulesoft and the future

The industry is abuzz with speculation and opinions about the high price, contemplating the driving force behind Salesforce’s multi-billion dollar decision and what added functionality that users can expect.

“Together, Salesforce and MuleSoft will enable customers to connect all of the information throughout their enterprise across all public and private clouds and data sources – radically enhancing innovation,” states the official press release released by Salesforce.

As a data integration platform, MuleSoft specializes in application programming interfaces, or APIs. Joining forces with Salesforce’s, its enabling them to unlock data across legacy systems and cloud apps. The CRM giant is already laying a solid groundwork for the technology Mulesoft has brought on board, with the recent introduction of Integration Cloud.

Connect it fast, Make it smart: Introduction of Salesforce Integration Cloud

The three main components of the Integration Cloud are:

–Integration Platform: This tool will be based on the Mulesoft technology, the integration platform will help users accelerate their digital transformations and make faster decisions to create highly connected customer experiences.

–Integration Builder: The Builder will allow users to map all of your systems to produce a single view of your customer across clouds, multiple orgs, and systems outside of Salesforce.

–Integration Experiences: The Experiences tool will help users create seamless and customized customer experiences based on the information gathered by the other tools.

When you think about the endless possibilities that a platform as well-stocked as Salesforce may be able to unlock through data integration provided by Mulesoft, why the former is paying $44.89 a share in cash and stock for a company that went public for $17 a share just a year ago starts making sense.